


The Short, Average Life of Moblit Berner

by JulyStorms



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-02-08 15:10:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1945821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JulyStorms/pseuds/JulyStorms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had never been a champion of justice, not like his sister. He was plain and average in every way; he had few close friends and no special talents. Even his looks were average. But he wanted Sam to live on somehow, maybe. He didn't want her dream to die just because she had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Short, Average Life of Moblit Berner

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea where this idea came from. I thought of it while I was driving home from class. I only did a half-assed editing job, so I apologize for that. Basically this is a fanfic dumping of Moblit headcanons. Feedback is always welcome.

Moblit was born into an average family. His parents were average in looks and temperament; financially they were also average for their district. Moblit himself was the very average second child.

His older sibling, Samantha, was not average. She was eight years older and she taught him everything she knew and then some. She went by Sam in those days, and roughhoused with the other kids. Moblit trailed behind like a dumb puppy, holding a weathered teddy bear as he watched the goings-on. Sam never forgot him: she held his hand when they walked home and helped him with his homework and told him that everything would be okay when she joined the military.

She had turned 15 that year. Moblit was seven years old.

He remembered only a few things about the goodbye. He cried. She said, "Don't be such a baby, silly." He cried some more.

She was in training for three years, and then she joined the Survey Corps, to the horror of their average parents.

At the ceremony, she took Moblit aside; the conversation with her was all he remembered of that night, a quick, hushed, "Mom and Dad don't get it. The Corps is where it's at, Mob. The Corps is where I can make an actual difference."

"Yeah?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said, and ruffled his hair. "Defense is great, but sometimes offense is the best defense. You know?"

She came home to visit three times over the next handful of years. She grew tall, and cut off her long hair. Bags formed under her eyes and she lost weight, but she smiled when she saw him, mussed his shaggy hair and teased him for growing a foot since she had last seen him. She only spoke of the titans when asked, and then her voice took on a strange sort of quality. But she always smiled. Her eyes always looked alive no matter how tired she seemed.

"Do you regret joining up?" he asked once.

"Nah," she said. "I'm making a difference. I'm fighting those asshole titans so that dorks like you can stay safe at home, get an education, all that stuff. So that you get to have an average lifespan."

"You're crazy, Sam."

"Anyone who joins the Survey Corps is at least half-crazy," she told him, dark eyes almost sparkling as she made a stupid face.

Sam died on the next expedition outside of the walls. She was the team leader for Team 10. Her body was recovered. The funeral was average: everybody cried, someone had gone out of their way to find dandelions, because it was the spring and the only flower around. Samantha was such a nice girl, they said. Moblit wanted to clutch his hands over his ears, wanted to say,  _"Sam! Her name is Sam!"_  but nobody cared about that, about what Sam would have wanted.

Three days after the funeral, Moblit turned 15, and at first daylight, he signed up to join the military.

He didn't think it through. He had never been a champion of justice, not like Sam. He was plain and average in every way; he had few close friends and no special talents. Even his looks were average. But he wanted Sam to live on somehow, maybe. He didn't want her dream to die just because she had.

His father cried when he told him over dinner. His mother was silent until the dishes were washed, and then she put a hand on his head and said, "Don't die."

As if anyone in the military could make a promise like that.

But he made it anyway. "I won't."

* * *

Training beat some sense into him. He wondered if maybe he wasn't an absolute idiot for joining up. He was built like a stick—all limbs and no muscle. He spent the first two years of training aching.

He met Hange after a couple of years; they were in the same training group, but he had never bothered to speak to most people, and he blended in, remained unnoticed. Sometimes he hated it, but other times it was useful. Nobody ever questioned his age at local taverns.

"Hange is an interesting name," he said when she introduced himself, trying to be polite.

"It's my last name. I don't like my given name much. Zoë? It doesn't match me at all!"

Hange laughed a lot—smiled and daydreamed and spent a lot of time alone. When she was deep in thought she looked as if she could take on the world. She never gave up, even when she was exhausted like everyone else.

She reminded him, he realized after a few weeks of talking to her, of Sam. Determined. Strong. Strangely affectionate.

And at least half-crazy.

"What branch are you going to join?" he asked her in the mess hall one evening, when she had her face buried in a book.

"Survey Corps," she answered absently.

"Me, too."

"Yeah?"

"My sister was in the Corps."

Hange closed her book, looked up at him with an odd expression on her face. "I'm sorry," she said.

"It was a few years ago."

"Still…"

"Is that why you don't care that much about your ranking?"

"I'm doing my best," Hange said, face reddening just a little bit. "Enthusiasm has to count for something, right?"

"I suppose it does. You have plenty of that."

"What about you?"

"I'm just average at everything," he admitted, smiling.

She grinned back at him.

* * *

Neither of them graduated in the top ten of their class. Both of them joined the Survey Corps. Only four people joined that year: Finnigan and Nanaba were the other two; Moblit didn't know either of them very well.

They were all assigned to different teams. Two weeks passed before he saw Hange. She was wearing a pair of thin-framed glasses.

"Glasses suit you," he told her, taking a seat next to her in the abandoned mess hall.

"Yeah?" She pushed them up. "My nose is not made to wear glasses, I think. They slide down a lot."

"They'll take some getting used to."

"I can see better, which is nice. I wonder if that's why I always did so terrible in training."

Moblit didn't answer. He was surprised to notice that her eyes, which he had always known vaguely to be brown, were easier to see behind the lenses of her new glasses. For a moment he forgot that he was talking to Hange. For a moment…he forgot that Sam was dead.

Hange didn't notice his lapse in thought. She just laughed at herself and hummed under her breath.

* * *

Finnigan died on the first expedition. Moblit felt lucky that no one in his team had died, but he still went out with some of the other younger soldiers, got himself half-drunk so that he wouldn't have to think of the crumpled bodies that they'd managed to bring back—and those who were still out there somewhere, in the bellies of titans or in pieces on the ground.

Hange's team had been all but obliterated. If it hadn't been for her team leader, Mike, she too might have died. He went to see her after the bar closed.

"I've got to get better at this," she said. "I can't just… Mike could have died, too, saving me. Why did he save me and not the others? Gina was a better fighter than I was. I can't believe she's dead."

"My sister used to say that…there are no principles to follow when fighting titans."

Hange was silent for a long moment. "You're right, of course," she said. "Well, she was right. There aren't rules. It's partially luck, isn't it? I was reckless and I lived. Gina was careful and she died. I guess it doesn't matter what I do, when the chance of dying is the same every time anyway, right?"

"Please be careful," he said.

_Don't be reckless on purpose_.

_Don't die_.

"I just get so mad," she admitted, blushing. He had never seen her look so embarrassed before—not even their third week in the Corps, when she'd walked into the men's bath on accident and had seen way more than she'd intended to of her team leader. "I'm not sure that I think straight when I get that way."

* * *

Hange's anger was what sustained her. It took Moblit several years to realize it. It was what kept her going when people around her died. It was what kept her from just giving up. Anger fueled her; it was all she had. All any of them had in the end.

Eventually even he saw too many people die not to feel anger whenever a titan appeared.

And when it was over, when they shuffled back to Headquarters missing one or ten or twenty of their numbers, names and faces he now recognized, now missed…he got himself drunk.

Sometimes Hange joined him, just to keep him company. She was a lousy drunk, anyway; eventually he stopped asking her to accompany him.

* * *

He was surprised to find out how old Hange actually was.

Five years older.

"I got a bit of a late start," she said. "Couldn't be a drain on my family forever, though. You know?"

He didn't know, but he nodded anyway.

His mother spent their expedition time praying and fasting and writing him long letters about absolutely nothing.

_Remember when Samantha…_

_The neighbor's cat is up to no good again…_

_The next time you come home, do you think you can stay for more than a night?_

He went home as often as he could, which wasn't much. But then he had to choose: a day here and there, or once a year staying just a few days. More was better, he supposed. That way he could see his parents grow old slowly, could see the way his scars made their hair turn grey, their skin wrinkle around their eyes and mouths and foreheads.

When he returned to the barracks he had to wash it all away.

* * *

Levi joined the Corps, and Hange fell in love with him right away—or at least the idea of him.

"He's had  _no training_ ," she whispered to him in the mess hall Levi's first night in the barracks. The two that had come with him, the redheaded little girl and the tall doofy-looking blond man, were sitting in a corner with Levi, looking like cornered animals. "The other two haven't either."

"Then why are they here?"

"Erwin said they're pretty good."

" _How_?"

"I don't know! I can't wait to find out. How old do you think they are?"

"The tall one's twenty, maybe. The girl can't be older than sixteen. No way."

"What makes you say that?"

"I don't know. She's just so… Her face is so round."

"Huh. I guess that's a valid point."

"And the midget—"

" _Moblit_!"

He laughed, "I mean…the short guy… It's hard to say. I want to say he's young because he's short but he looks so…"

"World-weary?" she suggested, eyes focused on Levi.

"Yeah. Like, if he could afford alcohol, he'd be downing it at record speeds."

She elbowed him hard, but grinned. "That's so rude."

"I heard that he was from the Underground. If you lived there you'd probably want to drown your sorrows in vine, too, right?"

She chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip, eyes still on Levi. "Nah," she said at last. "It's never helped me at all."

* * *

Hange introduced herself to Levi after the first time she saw him fight.

Moblit watched from the shadows, baffled at all three of the newbies. Protective of each other, like a little family. It made him miss his own. It made him wonder if he would even see his own family again.

Hange won all of them over soon enough—sort of.

"You made the midget awfully uncomfortable," he said.

"Did I?"

"You beat him over the head with compliments. He's probably never received such well-intentioned praise before in his life."

"Did you see him fight, though?!" she asked, eyes gleaming. "Wow! It was  _amazing_ , seriously. I—gah! I have to know his secrets!"

Moblit laughed. "Hard work? Practice?"

"There's something more to it than that! I mean, he  _is_  older than I am, I think, but he's  _so much better_ …"

"So's Mike."

"Mike isn't as good as this guy."

"You don't think?"

"I can tell."

* * *

Hange made it her life goal to annoy the heck out of Levi, after that. Moblit stayed well away from it; he'd heard things about Levi that he didn't quite like—like about his reaction to Erwin after his friends had died.

Friends? Maybe they  _were_  his family. Moblit never asked and he wasn't sure that he wanted to know, anyway. It just reminded him of Sam.

He wondered how many people were left alive now that Sam had known when she was in the Corps.

He wondered if the person whose life she had saved was also still alive.

* * *

"Not so average anymore, are you, Moblit?" Hange asked after one expedition.

"What?"

"I heard you saved Ken's life.  _Twice_."

"I heard they were thinking about promoting you."

She grinned. "That's bullshit and you know it. Nobody in their right mind would promote me."

Two weeks later Hange was promoted to a team leader.

Her team suffered only one casualty over the course of one year and five expeditions.

Then Wall Maria fell. Her entire team was lost in the long fight afterward: three people in combat, and one died of injuries three days later. Hange herself survived with injuries, but she grinned at Moblit, who was in the bed next to hers in the infirmary.

"Keith is stepping down," she said. "Erwin will take his place. They're going to promote you to a team leader. That's what Erwin told me."

Moblit raised an eyebrow.

"But I'm not going to let them have you. I'm being promoted to a squad leader, to replace Erwin. I'm going to steal you for my squad."

"What?"

"Well," she faltered, "if you want. If you don't mind. If you'd rather be a team leader, I won't stop you."

He had never heard her sound so disconcerted and it bothered him. "I'm not team leader material," he said.

"You're good in a fight. One of the best with teamwork. And you're smart."

"Average," he insisted, but smiled despite himself. "I'm a follower, not a leader. My sister was the leader."

"Probably led you right into trouble," Hange said. "Isn't that what siblings do?"

He paused for a moment, remembered Sam holding his hand, remembered that teddy bear and nights at the kitchen table while his sister helped him memorize his times tables. "No," he said at last. "Sam always looked out for me."

"You miss her."

"Sometimes," he admitted. He couldn't remember how many years it had been since the man in uniform had come to their door, had towered in the doorway to obstruct the sheet-covered body in the back of the wagon behind him while he gave his condolences for the loss of a fine soldier.

"She died…to save the life of another. It was an honorable death." At the time, Moblit hadn't understood it; he had understood loss well enough: Sam was never coming back, after all.

After the aftermath of Maria, he understood it all too well.

* * *

Moblit joined Hange's squad a month later when everything was made official.

He hoped that Hange would not regret her decision. He was nothing special, after all; despite her encouragement and enthusiasm for everything in the world, despite her hilarious protective instincts aimed at everybody she considered a friend—and Hange befriended everyone—Moblit knew that he was still average.

Average for someone who had lived as long as he had, anyway.

Hange really deserved someone better on her own personal squad. Someone who was equal to her skill, at least.

Moblit decided that he would have to do his best. It was all he  _could_  do, anyway.

* * *

"Squad Leader," he said to get her attention.

"You don't have to call me that."

"You earned the position," he told her, seriously. "The least I can do is show you the respect you deserve."

After all, he thought when she gave him a bit of a sad smile, she was now required to make difficult decisions on the battlefield, she now bore the guilt of the deaths of her squad even more heavily than before—because she was a squad leader and not a team leader…she was supposed to be a better fighter.

But she was still the same old Hange.

And he was still just an average soldier who would do everything in his power to keep her safe while she worked hard to keep other people safe.

* * *

His first expedition with Hange reinforced his idea.

She was not reckless in the way he remembered her being, but she was too—eager, too excitable. It was terrifying the way that she fought. Her anger was not something that bothered him; he was used to angry people exacting revenge for their fallen comrades or family members or even for the simple fact that titans kept them all trapped.

"It's not that I'm mad that we're inside a bunch of walls," Hange explained once. "It's the fact that we, sentient beings with intelligence and engineering on our side, are reduced to little more than cattle by those giant walking pieces of shit. We can do better than that, don't you think?"

The problem with Hange was that her fighting was unconventional. She was good—very good, better than Moblit remembered her being. She had improved drastically in the Corps from her trainee days. But she cut things too close. Called attention to herself by shouting in combat.

He spent every expedition with his heart in his throat worried for her safety. When he returned from each expedition, he went out with the other Corps members to drink—to drink and forget that they weren't normal, to pretend that John and Jake and Dan hadn't died on the last mission, to pretend that the seats they had sat in after the last expedition weren't being occupied by new recruits Jamie and Elise and Don.

* * *

And then, one day, Hange's shouting got her a smack from a titan. If it hadn't been for Nifa, a new recruit, surely she would have died; the blow had knocked her out, had left her with a concussion, and it had broken one of her arms and two ribs.

He overheard Nifa talking to her in the medical wing after they returned.

"Why'd you do it? Shout like that? Squad Leader, you almost died!"

"Well, it was going to get Jimmy. I thought that maybe if I distracted it…"

"Please be more careful. We almost lost you."

"We almost lost Jim, too."

Jim was a great guy—medium height, kind of stocky…a good fighter. An asset to the Corps. But Moblit thought to himself that, if he were going to have to choose between Jim and Hange…he would pick Hange.

He left without speaking to her, consumed, suddenly, with disgust for himself for thinking that at all—as if human lives were replaceable things. As if it didn't hurt every single time he looked around him at the tavern after an expedition and found new faces sitting in the seats he remembered other people having once occupied.

* * *

It was, during the forty-fifth expedition, that Hange kicked a titan's head and everything changed.

She was convinced that they needed to take titans alive, needed to study them, needed to see if there were weaknesses they didn't know about, weaknesses that might be more easily exploited than a cut through the neck.

"Poisons, even," she said. "What if poison could kill them? Or smoke?"

Moblit wasn't sure that he agreed with her, but she went half-mad with her theories, stopped everyone she possibly could to tell them all about it, to try to get more people to agree with her.

All she succeeded in doing was scaring the new recruits and making veterans avoid her.

It was a shame, really. If nobody had to die for it to happen, he thought that he might be okay with it. But letting people die to capture a titan that might not yield any information… He wasn't sure that it was worth it.

But mostly he felt sorry for Hange; even Levi, who was now one of her closest friends, tried to dissuade her from thinking too much about capturing titans. And she was so insistent on it: that it mattered, that it was important, that it was the answer to all of their problems.

When she asked, he took her out for drinks. It was against his better judgment, but he thought that maybe, this one time, it would help her a little bit—help her forget about everything, really.

But she didn't.

She talked more about capturing titans than she usually did, until the other patrons were staring, until she drank too much and went from tipsy to drunk, and then she started to cry.

He took her back to the barracks when she wouldn't stop crying, when she looked so miserable he just couldn't stand it anymore. As he helped Hange down the corridor to her room, he met Levi in the hall, and said, sounding less exasperated than he felt, "Squad Leader had a bit too much to drink."

Levi took her from him and said, "You reek, shitty-glasses."

She gave a petulant whine and asked, pressing her face into the back of Levi's shoulder, "Is that why nobody believes me?"

"Nobody believes you because you're drunk as hell."

"Oh," she said, sounding thoughtful. And then, softly, she added, "I don't like being drunk."

"Then don't do it again."

* * *

Hange didn't ask to go drinking with Moblit again.

It was different for him—drinking was. He was a happy drunk; it made him feel good, helped him think of stupid stuff that was amusing or interesting. His mother's letters seemed more pleasant when he was drunk, and if his vision blurred just right he could almost pretend that his parents still looked young, like they had the day Sam's body had been delivered to their door.

When he drank, he didn't think about how he'd been in the Corps as long as Sam had. It kept him from wondering if he'd die soon, too.

When he was drunk he would say, "Well, I'm your blessed average man. Average in looks, in temperament, in everything. I'll live an amazingly average life."

But an average life for someone in the Survey Corps was a rather long time.

* * *

Moblit remembered, vaguely, when Ilse Langnar went missing. He didn't think about it much—she had joined the Corps several years after he had, but she had an interesting look about her. The freckles, maybe, made her stand out—and her darker complexion. Everyone assumed that she was dead, that she had been swallowed whole and regurgitated somewhere far away.

Those who would have mourned her had died already; her entire team had died—some of them found in pieces.

Ilse's journal, which was recovered more than a year later, put Hange in a pensive mood for several days. Only after her proposal had been approved did she hunt Moblit down to talk about it: she had ideas for safer ways to capture titans, ideas for experiments that might be of some use, and hey—Levi was going to use his skill to help her out; wasn't that wonderful?

Moblit was happy for her; she did nothing but smile for days after Levi told her Erwin had approved it.

* * *

But Moblit's happiness didn't last long. As soon as Levi and his special operations squad brought in a titan, Hange started taking risks. She spoke to the stupid things, walked too close, underestimated them at every turn and overestimated her own skill.

"Squad Leader, no!" he found himself saying what felt like fifty times a day.

"You're going to hurt yourself!"

"You're really going to die one of these days if you keep this up!"

But her enthusiasm remained unhindered, and, for the most part, she ignored his complaints. She stayed up stupid hours of the night to check their reaction to light, cried for days when they accidentally died during experiments, and nearly died three times a day.

It started to wear him thin very quickly.

* * *

Something changed when the 104th trainee squad kids joined the Survey Corps.

Hange's enthusiasm for Eren was startling, but Moblit suddenly felt that he had to…do something.

He wrote to his parents.

He told them everything he could think of.

_Squad Leader Hange is weird, but everyone likes her a little bit, even Auruo, who mostly just complains about her chatty nature._

_Eren can shift into a titan. It's caused a lot of controversy in Sina; I'm sure you've heard already._

_We have a chance._

_I wish Sam could be here to see this._

He talked about what it was like to kill a titan, and what it felt like to lose a comrade you had only known for three days, fifteen years old and just a goddamned kid—what it was like to hold their hand tell them that it was okay to let go, that nobody would be angry with them, that they had done their best, that they had helped humanity and had honorably given their life to defend it.

_Captain Levi is crude and short and very strange, but even he has done it, Mom. Even he's held the hands of dying soldiers just to tell them that they can rest easy_.

He tried to make it real for them, for his parents, for his family.

Sam had never talked about the realities outside of the walls, and now that the titans were inside the walls, he thought…that if nothing else, his family needed to know, needed to understand.

He wasn't going to die like Sam had, die suddenly and unexpectedly, die living almost two different lives.

The Corps was a hell all its own, and he thought, that if he was to die, he was going to die well, die proud, and his parents, God bless them, wouldn't see a cart outside their door one day and try to imagine how their strong, beautiful, energetic daughter, with her father's eyes and hair and mother's smile, had died.

* * *

He received one letter from his parents before everything went to hell.

It started with a  _Thank you_  and he knew that they meant it.

After all, how could they ever understand his death if they couldn't understand his life?

* * *

The death toll grew higher.

The Survey Corps ranks grew thin.

One squad leader remained. Captain Levi. Commander Erwin Smith.

And a handful of scattered team remnants.

Hange left to speak with Erwin.

The news circulated that the Survey Corps members were all traitors; they were all to hand themselves in. Moblit didn't dare, not without Hange or Levi or Erwin around to tell him what was happening. He stayed hidden and waited for Hange—prayed to his last bottle of alcohol that she'd come back all right, that she wasn't dead.

Levi left, too, with the kids—on a mission. They didn't come back.

Moblit stayed at their hideout, stayed with two other Survey Corps members and the two men in the basement, one of which refused to eat.

* * *

Hange returned pale-faced with the kid in tow, the one who was supposed to inherit a corporation.

His father was dead, of course, and he had to stay hidden or someone would kill him. Moblit didn't ask who. He wasn't sure that he wanted to know.

Hange mumbled all kinds of things—about Erwin, about the Corps, about the position of commander, which she said was hers, or would be, or might be…if things didn't turn out all right. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking.

He wondered when it was she had last allowed herself to rest, and wished he hadn't drank his last bottle already.

Maybe it would make her cry, maybe she'd start sobbing for Erwin, or Levi (who still wasn't back yet, "Where is he? Do you think he's all right, Moblit?"), or even the guaranteed losses they'd already suffered, but at least she'd cry herself to sleep.

* * *

Levi wasn't dead, but…Hange's squad was. Moblit read it in the paper, knew who the bodies were by the descriptions of them. The fact that Levi's body wasn't among them meant that he wasn't dead.

That was what Hange said.

He hoped that she was right.

Hoped the kids were okay, too.

But it hurt when he thought about the rest of the squad. They were all capable fighters, or they wouldn't be on a squad leader's team. Moblit had only known Nifa well; she'd gone out for drinks with him a few times, had laughed at his dumb jokes, and had surprised him with some witty comments of her own.

He remembered asking Levi if he was to go with him.

He remembered Levi saying, "Nah. Stay here and wait for Hange. Make sure she doesn't do anything stupid."

They continued to wait.

* * *

Hange didn't cry when she saw Levi, but Moblit thought that if the kids weren't there, she would have burst into tears. She'd hardly slept or eaten anything since she'd returned to find him still missing, whereabouts unknown: no body no news no nothing.

Moblit was relieved to see him. Their numbers were…startlingly low and he didn't know what in the world they could do for humanity now, not with so few people alive, not with Erwin in custody of the Military Police. But Levi had grown up in the Underground. Surely he knew a thing or two about staying alive. Levi's scrappy skills and Hange's brain… Surely they would think of something.

* * *

The last day of Moblit's life started out average enough. He woke up, dressed himself, and joined the others.

They left separately, heads covered, and met up again in back alleys in smaller groups.

Nobody said anything.

They had their gear, and their skill. One of the kids swallowed nervously.

Levi led the group, said that if anything were to happen, they needed to run forward; they couldn't fight here; they had too many blind spots.

The enemy knew it. And Levi knew that they knew; Moblit could see it in the crease of his forehead, in the way his lips pressed together tightly.

* * *

It was silent except for the scrape of their boots against the street for a handful of minutes, but then everything exploded at once.

The sound of a gun going off reached Moblit's ears at the same time Hange's voice did; he wasn't sure if Hange were crying out from pain or in warning until he saw her fall against the stone of a building to one side of the alley; it was her shoulder, but then she stumbled forward into the surge of kids as they rounded the corner and prepared a counter-attack.

* * *

Moblit supposed that he had always known he would die an average sort of death. Sam was the one who died saving someone; he'd die all on his own, surely.

He hardly felt it when he was shot; a searing pain, but nothing worse than the prospect of being eaten by a titan. He might have laughed had his face not landed hard against the street, had he thought much about the fact that he had always assumed he'd die in a titan's mouth, not to a gun within the "safety" of the walls.

But he didn't laugh—he just choked. On his own spit, maybe.

Hange was there; he could hear her loud breathing, could feel her trying to lift him up onto her back.

But he weighed too much, and she had already been shot in the back of her left shoulder.

There was no way…

But she kept trying.

He wanted to tell her that he wasn't worth it.

Levi was stronger, more capable—the kids needed protecting. They were worth saving, worth the struggle to carry, maybe.

But he couldn't say it.

He couldn't say anything until he felt her arms trembling and she dropped him to the ground, fell with him, a small cry tearing out of her throat. She'd probably pulled something.

"Hold on," she panted. "Hold on," and she got back up again, tried to heft him over the other shoulder like he was a sack of potatoes.

She was wasting he energy.

He was half-dead already; everything around him looked…surreal.

She stumbled backward against the building on their right, and tried to say, "I've got you," but she didn't.

The others were far ahead, and the gunmen had gone after them—after Captain Levi, who was dangerous and the biggest threat to the opposition.

He tried to say something: her name, a word, anything, but all that came out was a croaking grunt.

"Yeah?" She tried readjusting him, but he felt his body slipping from her shoulder and from everything, really; darkness began to close in on his vision, and he just didn't care.

"Squad leader…" he managed to say, managed to mumble, sounding half-drunk or delirious or even dead. Even with his eyes closed, things were growing darker. He struggled to push the last word out, but he thought he felt it leave his lips before it was too late, a whisper against her ear: "No."


End file.
